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Friday, 31 July 2015

Mairangi Writers’
is an active group of twelve committed authors who like to keep pace with the
constantly changing world of writing. Originally formed thirty-five years ago,
the current group now meets once a fortnight at the Browns Bay RSA.

With over forty
titles available among them, in both fiction and non-fiction and across all
genres, the group’s work is on display at Malcolm’s Take Note in Mairangi Bay from 3
August for two weeks. Call in and see the display – you might even meet
one of the authors there, if you are lucky.

Mairangi Writers’
is a multi-talented group, boasting a professional conference organiser, a
photographer/cover designer, and a professional journalist and magazine editor
as well as a formatter and layout designer - all skills essential to successful
independent publishing.

At the meetings,
each member reads their work aloud, which the group then critiques. From time
to time, they invite publishers, book designers, distributors, agents and other
professionals to talk to their group to keep up to date. Outside of the
meetings, members help each other by ‘beta-reading’ and proofreading completed
manuscripts prior to publication.

Mairangi Writers’
holds book launches and seminars, has a presence at writers’ festivals, gives
readings at schools and libraries, as well as giving talks to service groups
and clubs.

If you would like
to hear a member of Mairangi Writers’ talk to your group, please contact one of
the members below.

Over the years,
many aspiring writers have asked to participate in the group’s meetings.
Unfortunately, due to lack of space it has had to restrict numbers to twelve.
There are currently no spaces available. However, the group is happy to assist
fellow writers, and often invite aspiring writers to attend the group for one
meeting to observe.

If any writers
wish to set up their own group with the initial help of the Mairangi group,
Contact Jean Allen on 09 4735910 or Vicky Adin vicky@vickyadin.co.nz

Friday, 24 July 2015

I wonder how many
writers when working on a book whether it be fiction or non-fiction, get pangs
of fear that they won’t be able to deliver the goods. If it is a first book of
course it’s understandable to have these fears, but what if it’s a recurring
theme when writing every book?

The one I am
working on at the moment is about an important historical event and it is
probably the most important book I will ever write. It’s about an English girl
who was an agent with the Special Operations Executive in World War Two – a
clandestine organisation set up by Winston Churchill in 1940 to “set Europe ablaze.”

My heroine, Diana
Rowden, volunteered to be dropped into enemy-occupied France to be a
courier for a resistance circuit in the Jura, a beautiful area of south-west France on the
border of France
and Switzerland.
She worked tirelessly, travelling all over the country keeping just one step
ahead of the Gestapo – a job fraught with constant danger.

Unfortunately her luck
ran out when she and her radio operator were denounced to the Germans. After
being imprisoned for several months Diana, together with three other girls was
taken to Natzweiler, the only Concentration camp on French soil, and executed
in a most brutal fashion.

This is a serious
work which I have spent the better part of 18 months writing and researching. I
even travelled to the other side of the world in the hope of gaining crucial
information.

When writing about
history you have a responsibility to do the best job you can. A lot depends on
producing a book which is high-quality and well-researched that people will
actually want to read and enjoy reading.

So I have to do
the best I can to do to give Diana the justice she deserves. I have to be
meticulous because when writing history there is no room for error. There are
too many people just waiting to come down on you like hot bricks if you make a
mistake!

And I have a
responsibility to all the people who helped me so much who have been so
generous with their time, especially the two dear French sisters, Claude and
Christiane who looked after me during my stay in France.

Have I given it my
best shot… have I done enough? These are thoughts which go through my head all
the time. Do I need to dig deeper?I’ll
have to wait and see.

Friday, 17 July 2015

The new world of social media, email, Twitter
and Facebook is hard to get your head around, especially if you’ve been forced
to confront it ah, let’s say late in life. You want to get involved but
sometimes you do the wrong thing and a patient colleague or sighing grandchild
will point it out to you, making you feel bad. Here are a couple of tips to help you
avoid some of the common blunders.

On Facebook, don’t post replies to other
people’s posts in your own status box. If you do that it will show up on all
your friends’ pages as a separate item that bears no relation to the item you
posted about. When you want to comment on something someone else has posted,
use the comment box directly beneath their post. Or to reply to a comment that’s
already there, click on the word ‘reply’ to get a new box you can type into.

On both Facebook and email, don’t share any
article that screams ‘tell everyone!!!!!’ without checking it first. Almost every time,
that dramatic plea to ‘please share with everyone you know…THIS IS AN IMPORTANT
MESSAGE’ is either a hoax or a total waste of time. How can you find out? Here’s
a typical email warning.

[Collected via e-mail,
November 2014]

Feel free to pass this
along to anyone you want. Better safe than sorry.

GPS left on dashboard in
the sun - WOW! Keep those electronics with Lithium Batteries out of the
sun!!!!!!!!

Looks like a good lesson
to learn. I would bet this also applies to Cell phones, tablets, digital
cameras, and other devices that use lithium batteries. You think this may be a
reason why the US Postal Service will not ship electronic devices that contain
lithium batteries any longer?

GPS was placed in its
bracket in the windshield and left in the sun. The battery overheated and exploded!

Can you say
"Totaled"?

Gosh, that sounds serious. Several of my
friends have GPS in their car. Should I warn them right away? NO! Check it
first by taking the key words from the message that cover what it’s about, like
‘GPS dashboard fire’ and type them into Google. You should see a whole set of
articles on the subject from a range of sites, and good ones to look for are www.snopes.com or hoaxbusters.

Just spending a few minutes browsing
through the Snopes site will arm you with all the latest hoax stories doing the
rounds and help you to recognise new ones.

Don’t be discouraged or put off from
sharing things online – everyone likes a good inspirational quote or a picture
of a rainbow, and there are great benefits to be had from your online friends.
As a writer I have a wonderful and supportive community at my fingertips every
day, always quick with a pat on the back for success or a word of sympathy when
times are hard. Follow me on https://www.facebook.com/BevRobitai
and I’ll be nice, I promise!

Monday, 13 July 2015

If your core objective is to write as much as possible to
complete the book you have now been working on for so long you can’t remember
why you ever thought it was a good idea, do not put your house on the market. (Well,
that’s one hint.) It is a huge distraction.All of a sudden, instead of sailing out the kitchen door safe in the
knowledge that all your mess will lie about comfortably on the bench in the sun
for the day, you will feel compelled to tidy absolutely everything away. The
same applies to the rest of the house, especially the bedroom. The linen must
be colour co-ordinated and fresh every time someone walks into the room, and it
simply is not acceptable to sling you pj’s over the hook on the back of the
door. The bathroom is the worst; despite more water being sloshed around in
this room than in the rest of the house combined, no drip must darken any
surface. The towels must all be white, fluffy and never used, and the shower
base must sparkle like jewels in the royal crown. In fact, the agent assures
me, it is the crowning jewel in the house; sales proceed or fall on the
appearance of the bathroom.

This slavish attention to detail means you don’t get near
your computer until the middle of the morning at the very earliest, and then
you have to knock off again in the early afternoon to cook, because, despite
all the hype about playing soothing music and having the aroma of fresh cooking
wafting from the oven, getting caught snivelling over the chopped onions as you
prepare the family’s favourite lambs fry and bacon doesn’t cut it. It is
astounding how many prospective buyers can only view properties at dinner time.

After weeks of agonising in limbo land someone finally makes
an offer, less than you wanted, but enough – and at last you are able to put
all your energy into packing. If you are unlucky as I was, the house you are
purchasing doesn’t settle for three weeks after you have to move out. Slinging
things into the back of the car to get them across town must be easier than
packing to go into storage. And I am sure, the keyboard for your computer won’t
get lost if you are able to only transfer your most treasured possession once.

It’s wonderful to have family come to stay from the other
end of the country; however, regardless of how much you love your
grandchildren, they do not help you to unpack. They want to play at the beach
and ride the bike which is kept at your house just for them, and you will want
to go and do things with them. But gumboots, sand digging tools and favourite
bed time books do not rise to the top of the pile of their own volition and
neither do keyboards.

Think seriously before you get rid of your old desk, even
though you know it won’t go through the door of the new house without being
dismantled.Buying a new desk is
fraught. Such as, the box won’t go into your car and so the excitement of
setting up your new work corner is delayed until somebody with a bigger vehicle
can collect it for you from the store. However, I thought this desk, once in
the house, was a breeze. I scrambled around on my hands and knees happily
screwing parts together as instructed and within no time had an upside down
desk in my den. I could not lift it. My partner couldn’t help, he’d put his
back out shoving his own desk around. There it stayed for a week, upside down
in the middle of the room waiting for someone to help me turn it upright. But -
as we pushed it into place the legs I had so blithely screwed into place a week
earlier snapped off.

Another hint – do not schedule elective surgery into the
same time frame as moving house. The only thing worse than a mountain of packed
boxes is not being able to do anything about them. Especially because you know
– the elusive key board is in there somewhere.

Thursday, 2 July 2015

Recently I was
part of a discussion re the success or otherwise of Organ Transplant in New
Zealand. There are a number
of aspects to this not-so-well publicised act of public benevolence.

Donor

Recipient

Availability/condition of organ

Information

Consent (both parties)

Ethics

Hospital/surgeon availability

Racial/family taboos

Payment or not. This list is only a small section of a highly debatable/ emotional
topic.

My concern is the ability or otherwise
of any given hospital to deal with what would be a highly technical and
time-fragile surgical procedure.

Judging by the recent public airing
of the topic, it is apparent that given all the above conditions are positive
and a go-go, if the hospital doesn’t have a theatre available or is not fitted
out for the purpose, or even worse, there is no recognised team on tap, all optimistic
plans may simply fail at that point.

The second option becomes the
transport of the patient or the organ(s) to a more up to the minute specialist
centre. If any one of the above requirements is challenging, at this point the
next essential step is the viability of the organ. This depends on the
pre-death condition of the donor, the type/viability of the organ and the
condition of the recipient.

None of this takes into account the
weather for flights, the traffic at either end, the mobilisation of the team
and the theatre. In other words, time is of the essence and I suspect in many
places in NZ this might be impractical.

My question is… With New Zealand
holding one of the lowest rates of deceased organ donation in the Western
world, ie 8.7 donations per million people compared to say Australia's 13.5 and the
UK's 16.4, is this the problem? That because of transport difficulties we no
longer hear of miraculous transplants in any number so the whole idea has
fallen below the population’s line of vision?

Could it be, we’re not geared up to
clear the flight paths and highways in whichever arena is demanded so these
precious gifts can make it ‘without let or hindrance’ to save the life, for
example, of one of our people in distress?

I
do understand that all of the points made above can cause their own problems
but if all is viable and we don’t have a rapid joining together of donated
organ and ailing patient then that is a shameful state for our country to be
in.

A second reading of the ‘Human
Tissue (Organ Donation) Amendment Bill’ (Party Vote) put forward by Dr Jackie
Blue (National) was defeated in November 2007 by 70 noes to 49 ayes

Please, can Parliament get this Bill
back on the table for what would hopefully be a more informed and philanthropic
decision for New Zealand and New Zealanders to aspire to.